Do you know story of discovery of this synthesis. Soon after discovery of phenylhydrazine, in Fisher lab during organic synthesis, students synthesised phenylhydrazone of pyruvic acid (CH3COCOOH). After crystallization from ethanol all except one got the needed colorless crystals of phenylhydrazone. This (fortunate) student got deep blue powder which cannot be dissoved in water or ethanol. Fisher started conducting an investugation and found that the alcohol used for crystallization by this student was acidic (this student pures ethenol into bottle used prviously to hydrochloric acid). And this investigated powder appeared to be the indigo.

Just goes to show what with all the planned stuff that goes on these days and back before all the instrumentation we take for granted in the lab, a lot of stuff was truly discovery and very intelligent people working on fundamentals.

I wonder what people like Fischer, Perkin, Sabatier etc would make of the labs, the information exchange and everything else in modern chemistry today...